How to get mysqli results from database where the WHERE clause searches for records that have part of it, not necessarily whole of it

Question

In order to understand my question let me begin with let me point how my user_records table looks like (Below)

=====================================
ID  FirstName LastName   Mtr
-------------------------------------
2   Tom       Bradley    972379-nai
3   Floyd     John       438909-jersey
4   Craig     Tommy      984389-new
5   Nelson    Harvey     783902-tow
6   Dean      Wayne      984389-jdd
7   Craig     Tommy      984389-ird
8   Mark      John       438909-carli
=======================================

You will realise that under Mtr column we have values that have an integer part as well as an alphabetical part.

The challenge is to return results from a query which the WHERE clause is column Mtr but only the integer part.

This is what I mean:

$reference = 984389;//This will be passed to the WHERE clause
/*
what is expected is that the query returns records whose Mtr part contains $reference
*/
$query = "SELECT * FROM user_records WHERE Mtr='$reference'; 
$result = mysqli_query($conn,$query);

The expected result is that the query returns records 4, 6 and 7

Answer 1

$query = "SELECT * FROM user_records WHERE Mtr LIKE '%$reference%';

$result = mysqli_query($conn,$query);